Education issues have flown under the radar this election cycle despite both major candidates having big ideas about how the K-12 and college systems should work.
From student loans to transgender rights, American students, teachers and parents would see completely different and sometimes directly opposing proposals if Vice President Harris or former President Trump were elected.
Here are the top five areas of education where the two nominees differ:
Student loans
More than 45 million Americans currently hold billions of dollars in student loan debt.
Under a Harris presidency, borrowers are likely to see a continuation of the defense of student loan initiatives started under the Biden administration, such as the new Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) plan and the president’s Plan B student debt relief measure that is going through the negotiated rulemaking process.
The Biden-Harris administration has forgiven the most student debt out of any presidency, recently forgiving loans for 60,000 public service workers.
“Before President Biden and I took office, only 7,000 people had received Public Service Loan Forgiveness. We fixed the program, and now over 1 million public servants — from firefighters and nurses, to service members and teachers — have had their student debt canceled,” Harris said Friday on the social platform X.
She is likely to receive a lot of pressure from the left to enact some form of universal debt forgiveness, though President Biden’s efforts along those lines have struggled under legal challenges.
Trump, who has been vocally critical of the White House’s efforts, would likely not support much student debt relief, after doing little on the issue during his previous presidency. He could back the government out of the SAVE plan that aimed to lower monthly payments and give debt relief to some borrowers.
School choice
School choice has become an increasingly popular policy among Republican-led states and in the party nationally.
Trump recently said at a campaign event that school choice is the “civil rights issue of our time.”
He has hinted at a universal school choice policy and has adopted language used by the movement in states that have offered education savings accounts, a stipend that goes to parents who want to homeschool or send their kids to private school.
“We want federal education dollars to follow the student, rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” Trump said in Milwaukee.
Harris has not talked much about school choice, but Democrats have aggressively pushed back on the idea, arguing it takes away money from and ultimately weakens public schools.
Transgender rights
Progress on the rights of transgender students could look vastly different between the two presidencies.
Trump previously said on his first day in office he would undo Biden’s expanded definition of Title IX that included gender identity and sexual orientation. The expanded definition allowed transgender students to use the bathroom or locker room they preferred, which has been pushed back on by Republican states.
Trump would also want Congress to target gender-affirming care and supported the idea of punishing teachers if they “suggest to a child they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
Harris has been a staunch supporter of transgender rights. While she hasn’t talked about the issue much on the campaign trail, she has a track record of support, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, governs a state known as a “trans refuge.”
“If you’re watching any sporting events right now, you see that Donald Trump’s closing arguments are to demonize a group of people for being who they are. We’re out there trying to make the case that access to health care, a clean environment, manufacturing jobs and keeping your local hospital open are what people are really concerned about. They’re running millions of dollars of ads demonizing folks who are just trying to live their lives,” Walz said on a recent podcast appearance.
Transgender rights will also be the subject of a major Supreme Court case this session, which will determine the legality of Tennessee’s law that bans minors from receiving gender-affirming care. The case could have major implications for health care for transgender children around the country.
Department of Education
The fate of the federal Education Department itself could be on the line after the election.
Trump has threatened numerous times to get rid of the Department of Education, arguing it brings inefficiency to the government and that schools are best left up to states and local governments.
“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said at a rally.
Project 2025, a conservative platform for the next president that Trump has denied having any relation to, laid out the groundwork for how a government would work without the department.
The platform essentially moves its workload to other federal agencies or the states.
However, Trump also campaigned on getting rid of the department back in 2016 before his first presidency and made little concerted effort to do so from the Oval Office.
Curriculum review
While curricula are largely left up to the states and individual schools, Trump has threatened to change this.
Back in March, he said he would be cutting funding for schools that teach on concepts such as “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
Harris has not called for any national curriculum reviews, and the administration has condemned efforts by Republican states to block courses such as AP African American studies.
The Democratic platform calls for uplifting low-income schools and implementing universal pre-K, but there has not been much discussion on restricting curricula in schools.
“Democrats believe that all children across the United States should have access to high-quality early childhood education programs. We will work with states to offer pre-K for all three- and four-year-olds and expand Head Start and Early Head Start,” the platform reads.
